The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827, entitled "LABEL PRINTING SYSTEM FOR A COMPUTER OUTPUT LINE PRINTER", issued to Norman R. Lilly, et al., and assigned to the assignee of this application, is incorporated herein by reference. Said U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827 discloses a computer output printer with a bail rod. Attached to the bail rod is a separator rod that defines a path of travel for a web of release liner to which labels are affixed in a regular pattern. The web's path of travel runs past a print head which prints information on the label and then on to a separation edge defined by the separator rod. At the separation edge there is an angle in the path of travel. The angle is sufficiently large to cause the labels, which are stiffer than the liner, to separate from the liner. The label printing system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827 has been found to be quite useful and efficient, particularly as part of parcel processing systems.
In the label printing system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827, a label must be advanced some distance beyond the print head to the separation edge in order to obtain separation of the label. As proposed in that patent, each label has an initial field in which fixed information is printed and second field in which variable information is printed. A label printing cycle includes printing variable information on a label upon which fixed information had previously been printed, advancing the label to and past the separation edge, and printing the fixed information on the next label while the first label is advanced for separation. As stated in that patent, if all the information to be printed is variable, the pitch, or distance separating successive labels, must be increased, so that after separation of the first label, the initial portion of the next label is aligned with the print head.
Referring to FIG. 1 of the present application, there are shown webs 10, 10'. Labels 12 on web 10 are rather closely spaced with a pitch P. On web 10' the pitch of labels 12 is P', much greater than P. Web 10 is of the sort that may be used with the system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827 when some of the information to be printed on label is fixed. However, where all of the information is variable, web 10' or the like must be used in the system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,827. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the cost per label of web 10' is much greater than that of web 10'. Accordingly, it would be a desirable improvement if a label printing system were capable of printing variable information on all of the area of the labels 12 of web 10.